Dear Friends,

“To what shall we compare the kingdom of God?  It is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds on the earth.  But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants.”  When Jesus was conceived within the womb of the Virgin Mary, he was microscopic.  Just like us at our conception he was tiny, he was no more than the size of a mustard seed.  But now today His Mystical Body extends the world over, His Mystical Body extends even beyond space and time into eternity.  With our baptism we became a part of something magnificent and holy; we became a member of the Mystical Body of Jesus, something magnificent and holy.  Do we always recognize the greatness of the divine flowering of the mustard seed within us and in the people around us?  Do we always recognize Jesus within us and the people around us?

I have a story about a rich young man by the name of Alexis.  He lived in Rome during the fourth or fifth century and he lived at a time when it had just become legal to be a Catholic.  People could finally practice the Christian faith out in the open.   Both of Alexis’ parents were devout Catholics and his father was a senator.  Alexis’ parents taught him the faith and taught him to be especially charitable to the poor.  When Alexis was a teenager, he decided that he wanted to give up everything, give up his wealth and give up his place of privilege in Roman society.  He wanted to live a life of poverty and prayer, and he wanted to do this all for God, but his parents had other plans for him.  They had arranged for him to marry a rich young woman.  And because it was their will for him, he went along with it.  He really listened to his parents.  Yet on his wedding day when he saw his bride for the first time, he had second thoughts, this woman was smart, loving, and beautiful, and she would be a great wife, but even so, he asked for her permission to leave her for God.  She gave him permission.   So, he left.

He made his way to Syria, where he lived the life of a beggar.  Any money he received he first shared with the many poor people around him using only what was left over for himself.  When he wasn’t begging he was praying in the various churches of the city.  After living this way for several years people began to recognize him for his extraordinary holiness.  People would come to him for advice and to ask for his prayers.  They called him the living saint.  And this made Alexis very uncomfortable.  So after seventeen years in Syria he made his way back to Rome and to his parents’ house.  He came as a beggar to his own house where he’d grown up.  His parents didn’t recognize him and so he started living under the stairs leading up to their front door.  His parents allowed him to live there not knowing who he really was.  And there he stayed spending his time begging for food, praying in the churches of Rome, and teaching the homeless about God.  With his parents never realizing who he was, even though they passed him and looked at him every day as they went to and from their house. 

One morning, after 17 years of living under the stairs, the servants found him dead.  But before burying him they went through his few possessions, even going through the pockets of the jacket he was wearing.  And in one of his pockets, they found a note.  The note explained to them who he was and how he had lived this life of penance and prayer from the day his wedding was supposed to take place until then, a total of thirty-four years.  Writing that he did it all for the love of God.  Praying and sacrificing for the people of God.

When Alexis’ mother came to look and to hold the dead body of her son she cried out, “My son, my Alexis, I have known you too late! You were there all the time and I never really saw you.” She was heartbroken.  She had seen her son every day for seventeen years, yet she didn’t really see him.  She had heard her son every day for seventeen years, yet she didn’t really hear him.  She had invited her son into her home, yet she didn’t really invite him in.   He got only as far as the space beneath the stairs.  It was a superficial relationship.  Alexis’ parents looked at their son every day for 17 years without ever really seeing him.  And then it was too late.

Do we always recognize the greatness of the divine mustard seed within us and in the people around us?  Do we always recognize Jesus within us and in the people around us?  Pope St. John Paul II was very good at this recognition of the divine within.  They say that when you talked with him you had his total attention and concentration.  In his papers St. John Paul wrote about this, he would say that each one of us is unrepeatable and incomparably unique.  Even within the unbaptized there is a soul that is unrepeatable and incomparably unique, and he paid attention.  He recognized the divine within, a soul made in the image and likeness of God, a soul with a whole lifetime of joys and sorrows, a soul with a whole lifetime of successes and failures, a soul made for communion with God.  St. John Paul paid attention. 

I give you homework this week; practice paying attention to those around you; the clerk behind the counter, the man at the street corner, your spouse, your children.   Recognize the greatness of the divine flowering of the mustard seed, recognize Jesus within, and recognize the greatness of the immortal soul within.

“To what shall we compare the kingdom of God?  It is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds on the earth.  But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.” 

Maybe you’re the one meant to provide shade to one seeking the Kingdom of God.  May we pray for the grace to pay attention.

Pax et Bonum,

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley